The Cure is an alternative rock band which formed during the punk era of the 1970s in Crawley, England. The band started playing together in 1976 while Robert Smith and Laurence Tolhurst were still in secondary school. Their initial sound placed the band amongst the post-punk/New Wave movements while the darker music that followed, helped formulate the gothic rock genre that developed through the 1980s. The Cure have released thirteen studio albums and over thirty singles during the course of their career, and as of 2004 have sold 27 million albums worldwide.